The Washington Post takes a hard look at cycling and its struggle with doping controversies. The story talks to a number of the sport’s top personalities and interviews David Millar on his past mistakes and current hopes.

From the article:

This year, Millar is racing on Vaughters’s new Slipstream team, of which he is part owner. The American team, which keeps a base in Girona, Spain, about 50 miles northeast of Barcelona, has had difficulty finding a big-name sponsor willing to accept the risks of being associated with cycling, Vaughters said, and that is willing to contribute the roughly $8 million a year it would cost to sponsor the team.

Under Slipstream’s $500,000-a-year testing program, Vaughters said, every rider is tested about every two weeks for doping violations; unlike the secrecy that surrounds other doping tests in cycling, Slipstream offers to make all its test results public.

Prudhomme, the Tour de France director, said the organizers offered a surprise invitation for Slipstream to race in this year’s Tour “because we like their philosophy, particularly in terms of their ethics and anti-doping measures.” The team also will compete on Sunday at the CSC Invitational, a 62-mile race held at the Clarendon Metro stop in Arlington.

“I’m very representative of my sport. I cheated, and that’s it,” Millar said. “For the last decade, it’s been affair after affair, story after story, admission after admission, and the fans are finally giving up. But the doping culture is turning into an anti-doping culture, and in five years, we are going to be at the vanguard of anti-doping and ethical sponsorship. It will no longer be — just take our $5 million, put our name here, and we don’t care what happens. We could be an example for all sports.”